We don’t always stop the presses to celebrate the artist collaborations at the Gemini workshop, except for the occasional Baskin Robbins ice cream cake from our friend Abel Eljam, because the printers hardly skip a beat when one artist departs, furiously working to print an edition before another artist arrives. For example, by the end of this month Gemini will have hosted four out of town artists this spring – James Rosenquist, Sophie Calle, Daniel Buren and Joel Shapiro.

Gemini GEL at Joni Moisant Weyl is proud to display new and recent Gemini publications by John Baldessari, Jonathan Borofsky, Ann Hamilton and Richard Serra. Each artist’s project at Gemini could not be more different – from lithography and screenprinting to etching to constructions that combine printmaking with fabric and bamboo. These four artists are a perfect representation of the Gemini ‘can-do’ spirit and the diverse specialties of our printing staff.

John Baldessari’sNose/Silhouette series began with a party! The Gemini workshop printed a photographed nose on fields of color which were made into masks and used as place settings for a dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant Cut. The dinner followed the opening of Baldessari’s spectacular exhibition at LACMA, Pure Beauty, and guests, along with the artist, had great fun posing with the masks. Gemini and the artist resolved to make the images into a series of editioned prints.

Jonathan Borofsky visited the Gemini workshop back in 2008, working with text on Mylar. In 2010 his lithograph God is a Feeling was finally resolved, as was a screenprint of words from his mother:

“Several days before my mother died, I was sitting at her bedside – just talking about things. At one point I casually asked her if she had any words she wanted to leave behind. Without taking any time to think about it, she answered ‘Be Happy, Do the Best You Can, Be Good and Kind’.” – Borofsky

Ann Hamilton made a batch of party hats in honor of Sidney Felsen’s 85th birthday in September of 2009. These small lithographs with collaged fabric to be used as string were just the beginning of her juxtaposition of printmaking and fabric. The sheets of lithography became larger and the process of collaging fabric more complex as ciliary was formed.

Each ciliary begins with lithography on eight sheets of a creamy Japanese paper, Mitsumata. Added to the paper panels is a strip of fabric, adhered to one edge. A narrow accordion fold is applied, and bamboo ribs and hardwood dowels reinforce the folds on the verso.

It is impossible to visit the Gemini workshop without noticing the presence of Richard Serra. Serra has tirelessly pushed the boundaries of printmaking beyond the scale even the Gemini printers might have thought possible, conveying the weight and monumentality of his celebrated sculptural works onto a thin sheet of paper. In recent years Serra’s etching have grown to upwards of 85 inches, but these latest collaborations present a classic Serra study of the curve on an intimate scale. The series of 13 Junction prints, each measuring 16 x 18 inches, render various torque ellipse forms in concentrated, untidy etchings.